Last weekend, I traveled out to the West Coast to visit my sister, brother-in-law, and 2 nieces for Halloween. It happened to coincide with my scheduled days off from work, which is the reason why there wasn’t a column last week if you’re keeping score.
As an uncle, it’s admittedly hard not to go nuts and spoil my nieces silly. However, I’m sure if I did go overboard, I would hear it or get the evil eye from my sister and brother-in-law.
One thing that I’ve been trying to do with my nieces is introduce them to my love of Funko items like Pops and Dorbz via the Disney princesses route. I feel this would be the safer way to bond with them instead of what my best friend Dave does with his nieces. He, like myself, is a big professional wrestling fan and has gotten his nieces to enjoy it in some form.
I think I would get more than an evil eye from my family if I tried this.
So getting back to the Halloween weekend. I gave my nieces Clover and Talia the Ariel and Belle Dorbz and left it to them to see who would get what. Talia in particular took a real big liking to Ariel and brought it with her everywhere during my short stay.
Before my trip ended, I also gave Clover the Snoopy Rock the Vote 3-Pack as a birthday gift. She seemed very pleased with it and shared it with Talia. They both then proceeded to slightly throw them around.
As they continued to play around with the 3-Pack, it kind of gave me perspective on Funko collecting.
The Snoopy Rock the Vote 3-Pack, as many of you probably know, is a New York Comic Con exclusive from Fugitive Toys. The second it was announced, the idea of buying it for my niece’s birthday immediately entered my mind.
My nieces didn’t know or care about this being an exclusive and relatively popular among collectors. They just wanted to play around with the red, white, and blue Snoopys or toss it at each other playfully.
That’s the cool part to me. Sometimes, we take collecting way too seriously, whether we’re in-box collectors, out-of-box collectors, or furiously trying to track down that one “grail” that supposedly would complete our lives.
Lately, I’ve read about a lot of stressed out people trying to hunt down exclusives, angrily exclaim how subscription boxes are big letdowns, or how they missed out on some online sale.
To this, I say…collecting is supposed to be fun. Yes, we lose sight of this when something catches our interest and doesn’t let go. I know I’m certainly guilty of that, i.e. Thanos Dorbz XL.
Still though, sometimes it might be wise to take a step back and know that maybe driving ourselves crazy to get that one Pop, Dorbz, or Hikari isn’t worth getting a few gray hairs over.
Thanks to my short trip out to visit my family, I think I’ve realized this. That and having a red Snoopy being thrown at your head.
Matt Norris